In New York: A Documentary Film, Ric Burns (brother of the famed
documentarian Ken Burns) presents an exhaustive history of New York City
from the settling of the area by the Dutch to the attack by terrorists
nearly 400 years later. Told in a sentimental tone, Burns weaves a
lyrical tale of the great metropolis that encompasses not only the
city's streets, but also that of the history of America. Though around
fourteen hours in length, this epic documentary presents a thoughtful,
entertaining look at our relatively young country.

Type: Documentary

Languages: English

Status: Ended

Runtime: 120 minutes

Premier: 1999-11-14

New York: A Documentary Film - Paris Is Burning (film) - Netflix

Paris Is Burning is a 1991 American documentary film directed by Jennie
Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball
culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and
transgender communities involved in it. Some critics consider the film
to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the “Golden Age” of New
York City drag balls, and a thoughtful exploration of race, class,
gender, and sexuality in America. In 2016, the film was selected for
preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library
of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically
significant”.

New York: A Documentary Film - Content - Netflix

The film explores the elaborately-structured ball competitions in which
contestants, adhering to a very specific category or theme, must “walk”
(much like a fashion model's runway) and subsequently be judged on
criteria including the “realness” of their drag, the beauty of their
clothing and their dancing ability. Most of the film alternates between
footage of balls and interviews with prominent members of the scene,
including Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, Angie Xtravaganza, and Willi
Ninja. Many of the contestants vying for trophies are representatives of
“Houses” (in the fashion-brand sense, such as “House of Chanel”) that
serve as intentional families, social groups, and performance teams.
Houses and ball contestants who consistently won in their walks
eventually earned a “legendary” status. Jennie Livingston, who moved to
New York after graduating from Yale to work in film, and who spent six
years making Paris Is Burning, concentrated on interviews with key
figures in the ball world, many of whom contribute monologues that shed
light on the ball culture as well as on their own personalities. In the
film, titles such as “house,” “mother,” and “reading” emphasize how the
subculture the film depicts has taken words from the straight and white
worlds, and imbued them with alternate meanings, just as the “houses”
serve as surrogate families for young ball-walkers whose sexual
orientations have sometimes made acceptance and love within their own
families hard to come by. The film depicts people with different gender
identities or communities and their different forms of expression. It
also explores how its subjects dealt with the adversity of racism,
homophobia, AIDS and poverty. For example, some, like Venus Xtravaganza
became sex workers, some shoplift clothing, and some were thrown out of
their homes by homophobic parents. One participant was saving money for
sex reassignment surgery. According to Livingston, the documentary is a
multi-leveled exploration of a subculture in African American and Latino
cultures that proves to be a microcosm of society, which was an
underappreciated and arguably underground world that many Americans were
unfamiliar with. Through candid one-on-one interviews the film offers
insight into the lives and struggles of its subjects and the strength,
pride, and humor they maintain to survive in a “rich, white world.” Drag
is presented as a complex performance of gender, class, and race, in
which one can express one's identity, desires and aspirations along many
dimensions. The African-American and Latino community depicted in the
film includes a diverse range of identities and gender presentations,
from gay men to butch queens to transgender men and women. The film also
documents the origins of “voguing”, a dance style in which competing
ball-walkers freeze and “pose” in glamorous positions (as if being
photographed for the cover of Vogue). Artist Malcolm McLaren (with Mark
Moore of S'Express and William Orbit) would, two years before Paris Is
Burning was completed, bring the phenomenon to the mainstream with his
song “Deep in Vogue”, which sampled the movie and directly referenced
many of the stars of Paris Is Burning including Pepper LaBeija and
featured dancers from the film, including Willi Ninja. The single went
to number 1 in the US Billboard Dance Chart. One year after this,
Madonna released her number one song “Vogue”, bringing further attention
to the dancing style. However Livingston maintains that the film is not
just about “a cute dance.” “This is a film that is important for anyone
to see, whether they're gay or not. It's about how we're all influenced
by the media; how we strive to meet the demands of the media by trying
to look like Vogue models or by owning a big car. And it's about
survival. It's about people who have a lot of prejudices against them
and who have learned to survive with wit, dignity and energy. It's a
little story about how we all survive.” Music producers C&C Music
Factory sampled some of Paris is Burning in one of the tracks from their
Gonna Make You Sweat album, entitled “Bonus” or “Shade”. Famous drag
queen RuPaul has also sampled a few of the quotes from the documentary
in her film Starrbooty, as well as on her TV show RuPaul's Drag Race.